What Is To Be Done?

A blogger without a clue

Things are bad, very bad ...

1. Natural disaster in Japan could begin a series of cascading events that includes additional earthquakes on other (potentially more dangerous) faultlines near Japan, failure of Japanese infrastructure (e.g. explosions at nuclear reactors and dramatically diminished electrical supply), and severe damage to the Japanese economy with downstream damage to the already weakened global economy while

2. Gaddafi reasserts control in Libya, Libyans suffer mortal punishment and repression, and anxiety over the global oil supply causes another spike in oil prices delivering another blow to the national economies of oil importers while

3. Billionaire capitalists in the United States finance a reactionary populist attack on government and

4. Republicans in Congress block spending for economic recovery, deconstruct healthcare reform, defund social programs, whittle away at Social Security, investigate Muslim Americans, deny responsibility for climate change while

5. Republican governors Scott Walker and John Kasich win a perhaps temporary but decimating victory over unions in Wisconsin and Ohio, and

6. State legislatures with conservative majorities begin a systematic attack on women's reproductive rights, minority set-asides and Latinos born in the United States and

7. Democratic state legislators in Maryland, politically intimidated by socially conservative, church-going African Americans from Prince Georges County, defeat a bill to legalize same-sex marriage while

8. District of Columbia Mayor Vince Gray, elected as a reformer to a term that began in January, finds himself hobbled by nepotism, cronyism and corruption scandals, severely wounding optimism for a DC city government run by grownups while

9. "No HIV testing" signs pop up on storefront clinics in the District and homeless people burst into tears of gratitude for eye contact and

10. I couldn't sleep last night for thinking about the engorged deer tick I found on my back.

So, assuming other issues not mentioned in the foregoing list, like war and peace and military spending are included and leaving aside the deer tick, what is to be done? I suggest three possibilities: one, throw a massive end of the world party and/or legalize marijuana; two, choose denial, in general, or join the Tea Party and pretend none of this is actually happening; or, three, join a diverse, multi-racial multi-cultural organization in your community and live, work and organize like our lives together depend on doing so. Any preferences?

10 Best Stoner Movies

Uh, well, there's...uh

I know The Big Lebowski is one of the 10 Best Stoner Movies of all-time, but I can't really think of any others. The Beatles' Help! is one of the peaks of the '60s zeitgeist and therefore has to count, even if it's not really of the genre.

Apocalypse, Now is really not of the genre, either, but if you think the people who made the movie--wrote it, acted it, directed it, produced it--weren't stoned along the way, you either are stoned right this moment, or never have been, at all. Therefore, Apocalypse, Now qualifies, too. It wasn't for stoners, it was by stoners. "By" and "for" both qualify.

I'd like to include "about," also, but there are simply too many movies that are about stoners to be considered part of the stoner genre. Broadly understood, virtually all movies are about stoners. A genre is a subset.

Linking to The Big Lebowski and Apocalypse, Now and to "stoner movies" and following the links will get us where?.

Ah, the link for TBL goes to "Memorable Quotes for The Big Lebowski." Very nice site. Memorable, indeed. And there is not a single line on the site that would contradict the notion that TBL is one of the Ten Best. One can also link to three of the stars of TBL, Jeff Bridges (also in The Fisher King), John Goodman (also in O Brother, Where Art Thou?) and Steve Buscemi (also in Reservoir Dogs , Con Air and Fargo), but I wouldn't advise it.

The link for Apocalypse, Now also goes to the "Memorable Quotes" site. Just read the first quote from Col. Kurtz and encounter the dark side of stoner movies. What, by the way, is a reader supposed to understand about the comma that separates Apocalypse from Now? Does it refer to Vietnam, the apocalypse happening in the "now" of the movie? Or is it the call of some darker figure for an apocalypse to begin, like, now?

Suddenly can't stop thinking about Smoke, which stars William Hurt and Harvey Keitel (advise that interested readers do not ignore this link to the website "Famous Marines In the News and In the Community;" after reading the long-winded and comprehensive first sentence about Keitel's career, one can backtrack on the site to the page about former marine Captain Kangaroo, aka Bob Keeshan). Keitel, by the way, was also in Reservoir Dogs.

Smoke had an incredible soundtrack. Screaming Jay Hawkins makes Tom Waits seem like a crooner.

There's something about Smoke that makes me think of a book I once read, titled, I believe Letting Go, by an author whom I can no longer identify, but whom brother Mark says is Philip Roth. The middle-class protagonist in Letting Go attempts to help a young woman whose life he is unequipped to understand. In the process, he methodically destroys himself. "Such book," as the German emigrants in Casablanca (not a stoner movie) might say.

Letting Go, of course, is not a movie and certainly not a stoner movie, but it makes good sense to end a post I have no hope of ever completing with a digression. So, three arguably stoner movies TBL, AN and Help! (four, if you include Smoke, which I have not actually nominated to the list), one film that would never qualify (Casablanca), several other mostly good films encountered while linking, and a book somewhat faded from memory--pathetic. Perhaps, others will flesh out the list.

As for the link to stoner movies, itself, that goes where? Here (among other places), a site that claims that such movies are almost always comedies and usually about dopers. Imagine that.

Letter to the Washington Post, #15

Actually, I never noted on this blog that the Post did publish letter #12. Obviously, I found that apparent success somewhat demoralizing. The evidence for that lies in the fact that I waited so long to write #s 13 & 14. Maybe they'll publish this one. It is, after all, somewhat sycophantic.


What Journalism Should Be

Editor,

Colbert King’s relentless pursuit of the facts in the jailhouse death of Jonathan Magbie (“For Jonathan Magbie, a Catalogue of Injustice," Dec. 6) deserves much praise. In the column, King thanks his editors for allowing him to return to the story 14 times since October 2004. In the process, King and the editors have provided us all with an example of what journalism should be.

This matters as surely as do First Amendment protections. Without such dogged pursuit and publication of stories that illuminate recurring issues in our society newspapers would be unworthy of their constitutional protections.

In Magbie’s case, Judge Judith Retchin so badly failed any reasonable humanitarian standard it is a wonder she remains in office. Likewise, in the Magbie instance and others, the D.C. jail has failed repeatedly to balance its duties to community safety with fairness in its treatment of prisoners. Based on King’s repeated accounts, it seems equally fair to say the hospital, now know as United Medical Center, failed miserably at keeping Magbie alive, clearly UMC’s first responsibility.

And of what was Magbie, a 27-year old, ventilator-dependent, quadriplegic, guilty? A first-time offense against marijuana possession laws.

There is no question in my mind that what happened to Jonathan Magbie shames us all. But as long as journalists and their editors give such stories the attention they deserve, we will have opportunities to fix the institutions and policies that permit such tragedies. And the country will have a journalism that serves our needs.

Jeff Epton
807 Taylor St., NE
Washington, DC 20017

202 506-7470